More Love Letters

A treasure trove of love letters from a young Jewish man in Soviet-occupied Przemysl to Janina (Janka) Rottenberg, one of 7,000 Jews deported into the Russian interior. So who was the letter writer? I forwarded the scans to our friend Lukasz, and...

Hello Alana and David,
thanks for sending me the letter. Very moving indeed. Janek's name is Ringelheim. Jakub, Josef, Israel ... we don't know. Janek is Polish diminutive from Jan, John. He writes from Slowackiego 68 ... Bingo!! This house belonged to Jakob Ringelheim, wealthy landowner.

A few Google searches later and here it is, on the US Holocaust Museum site, no less:

Pictured are Jacob and Miriam (Reich) Ringelheim with their son Josef. All were shot in a mass execution in Sambor in 1943.

Chaja (Klara) Ringelheim (later Chaja Rosenfeld, Chaja Rosenzweig, and finally, Claire Rosen) is the daughter of Jacob and Miriam (Reich) Ringelheim. She was born December 5, 1911 in Jaroslaw, Poland. Chaja had three brothers: David (b. 1906), Shimon (Sidney, b. 1907) and Josef (b. ca. 1921-22). Chaja's father, Jacob, had immigrated to the U.S., where he was naturalized on May 5, 1903. The following year, he was joined by his younger brother Benjamin, who was naturalized in 1913 and remained a resident of the U.S. for the rest of his life. Jacob returned to Poland in 1904 or 1905, settling in Jaroslaw. There, he married Miriam Reich and raised three children.

Together with his brother-in-law Nathan, Jacob ran a flour mill and possibly also a marmelade factory. Jacob returned to the U.S. in May 1916 following a violent incident at the flour mill. He returned to Poland in 1920 or 1921. His two sons, David and Shimon, immigrated to the U.S. in 1924. The rest of the Ringelheim family moved to Przemysl in the early to mid-1930s. Jacob eventually acquired co-ownership of a brick factory and several apartment houses.

Hitler's rise to power was a source of great concern to Jacob. Already in 1934 he wrote to his brother Benjamin in the U.S. that he was worried about the impact of the Nazi regime on the political stability of Poland, and was considering returning to America with the rest of his immediate family. However, the difficulty of liquidating his assets in Poland seems to have prevented him from doing so. Chaja started to work for her father as a bookkeeper in the brick factory in 1932 and continued in that capacity until the end of 1937.

In August 1937 she married Henryk Rosenfeld, the son of Chaskiel and Ernestyna Rosenfeld from Jaroslaw. The following year the couple left for Pisa, Italy, where Henryk began or continued medical school. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Henryk decided to return to Poland. Chaja's mother tried to get her permission to return to Poland, but did not succeed. Consequently, Chaja remained in Italy, and on April 13, 1940 was issued an American passport in Genoa (on the basis of her father's American citizenship). She immigrated to the U.S. shortly thereafter. Her parents and brother Josef were killed in Sambor, Ukraine in 1943. Henryk was also killed in 1943 near Przemysl. Chaja was living and working in the United States when she received a letter from Markus Rosenzweig, a Polish Jew from Krakow, who had survived the war as a member of the Anders Army. He invited her to come to London to meet with him. He was single, and when he learned that Chaja was a widow it seemed as if it might be an opportunity for them both. She sailed to London on the SS St. Mary in 1948, and on January 22, 1949 Chaja and Markus were married. The wedding took place in Paddington, England, and the couple moved later that year to the United States. In 1951, when Markus was naturalized as an American citizenship, they formally changed their names to Marcus and Claire Rosen.

So, does the ten-year old Josef in the photo grow up to be the letter-writer Janek? Alana thinks so:

This is truly amazing, and very fast. I recognize Janek's ears from the photograph I have, and the one you just sent me, so that's definitely him. I can't help but feel incredibly sad right now - My girlfriend and I had quite fallen in love with Janek from the letters we have translated so far. I can't imagine what it was like for my Grandmother.

Lukasz weighs in:

That would be strange, but not impossible. The diminutive from Josef is Jozek, not Janek. OK, sometimes they changed their names. Anyway, I'd rather be careful and think of some Ringelheim cousin. Israel, Icchak, who liked to be called Janek. I forgot to add that my family was deported to Siberia from Lwow at the same time. To Altai, not to Kazakhstan, like Janina.

Me? Hmmmm... Next: we get the Kazakhstan address and locate Janek/Josef's niece(?)

Love letters from Przemysl

From over time and overseas comes a remarkable time capsule to my in box. In it is the story of a doomed love between a man in Soviet occupied Przemysl and a women who had been deported to a work camp deep in Russia. Ominously, the letters end in June, 1941 - coinciding with the date that the Nazis crossed the San and took control of Przemysl.

I have been living with and caring for my late-grandmother’s sister - Ada Halpern (formerly Ada Rottenberg born 1922 in Przemysl) while she suffered from dementia. She has since passes away, and I’ve discovered 132 love letters / telegrams sent from a man in Przemysl named Janek to my Grandmother Janina (Janka) Rottenberg during the beginning of WW2.

The love letters are dated from May 10th 1940 to June 18th 1941, and are addressed in Russian to Siberia where Janka and Ada worked in a labor camp and were able to survive the war. Neither of them mentioned these letters to my father, and Janka married my grandfather - Henryk Kornfeld (another survivor) after the war. Unfortunately my grandmother passes away just before I was born, so no one knows the story.

Attached are scans of a couple of the letters and photos I've found. A friend is helping translate the Polish, but I’d love to get them professionally done. If you know a good service, please let me know. I would love to find out if anyone knew of my family, and what happened to Janek – the man who wrote these incredibly tender letters, that give some insight into what it was like in Przemysl during that period. There are other names mentioned briefly in the letters of others living there during that time that may help connect people. (Above) is a photo dated 1939 with the name Janek in the same hand writing from the letters. I think it might be him and my Grandmother?


I do know a little about Henryk Kornfeld (my Grandfather). He was not from Przemysl, but he had been studying in Italy when he came back to Poland to visit his mother. He ended up being sent to three different concentration camps before buying his way onto Schindler's List with a diamond his mother gave him. He worked in Schindler's munition factory until the end of the war, and would smoke Schindler's cigaret butts that he dropped on the factory floor. He told my father that Schindler was a very good business man.

Henryk only ever spoke of his experience the one time just before he died. After the war he moved to the Phillipines and eventually Australia (where I grew up), and became a very successful business man himself. It's quite an extraordinary story that I'd like to write about and find more information on as well.

Alana

One of the letters:

Addressed to Siberia